| Photo and story used with permission of The Wisconsin State Journal.
Photo of Ted Davis by Steve Apps, Wisconsin State Journal. WSJ Reporter Phil McDade wrote a great story about the
Pietenpol enthusiasts stage aviation event that's all their own By Phil McDade Wisconsin State Journal SOMEWHERE OVER BRODHEAD--You can appreciate a Pietenpol airplane on the ground, its clean lines a model of simplicity some 70 years after it first flew. You can understand Pietenpols by talking to their owners, whose enthusiasm for the tiny craft makes Green Bay seem tame by comparison. But you only truly experience Pietenpols by climbing into one and taking off into the sky. So Ted Davis, a Brodhead native who has built several of the airplanes, takes over the controls of a Pietenpol (pete-an-pole) and invites you into the passenger seat. That would be the one in front, right underneath the wing, about three feet from the Model A Ford engine that powers the plane. After powering down the run way for, oh, maybe 50 yards, Davis pulls back on a stick. Suddenly you're up in air, the wind rushing through your hair, the engine buzzing in your ears. and your view unencumbered by windows or anything else. Just try not to have fun. Grant MacLaren remembers his first flight in a Pietenpol. Twelve years ago, a friend took him up in one. MacLaren, a Model A car enthusiast from Missouri, didn't believe it when his friend told him about the plane powered by a Model A engine. "He said, 'Well, let me show you something,'" MacLaren said about his initial flight. "I didn't believe it. It was like going to Nirvana. That changed my life." MacLaren was just one of about 100 fans of the plane who gathered this past week at the Brodhead Airport for what is billed as the largest Pietenpol fly-in in the world. About two dozen of the airplanes flew into Brodhead, landing on one of the airports three grass strips. The fly-in, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, is many things. For some, it's a chance to camp out overnight on the spacious airport grounds and partake in Saturday night's pork chop and sweet corn feed. For others, novices to the plane, it's a chance to pick up on pointers for building their own Pietenpol. For many, it's a reunion of a small but enthusiastic clique of airplane owners. But for everyone, the Pietenpol fly-in is an annual tribute to perhaps the world's simplest airplane and its inventor, Bernard Pietenpol. Pietenpol was a self-taught mechanic and tinkerer in rural southeast Minnesota who became interested in flying not long after the Wright Brothers' flight in 1903. His first few planes were a disaster, according to MacLaren, who is making a film and writing a book about Pietenpol and his airplane. But then he seized upon the idea of using a Model A Ford engine in an airplane. It was successful, and soon plans for the plane were available through magazines nationwide. Pietenpol's goal, according to MacLaren, was to create an affordable and simple airplane easy enough to build at home. Today, you could build a Pietenpol for about $4,000 worth of materials, he said. "It's so basically correct," MacLaren said of the airplane's open cockpit, overhead-wing design. "A good design lasts forever. Because it's such a simple design, people think they can improve it. But simple doesn't mean crude. There is a simpleness that is just elegant." Pietenpol purists will tell you only a Model "A" engine belongs in a true version of the airplane. But Pietenpol himself toyed with the airplane, and even praised the performance of a Corvair engine that he used in the 1960s. The last airplane he built, complete with a Corvair engine, hangs in the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum in Oshkosh. But Pietenpol builders like Ted Trevorrow, four years into building his first airplane, say the airplane's engine matters less than staying true to the inventor's goal of creating an affordable, easy-to-assemble craft. "If Pietenpol was alive today, he was the kind of guy who experimented," said Trevorrow, who lives in Mukwonago and flies out of Palmyra. "I bet he would have put a Suzuki engine on something." Pietenpol died in 1984, but his spirit is alive and well with devotees of his little airplane. Just ask Jim Hoevelmann, who arrived at Brodhead Friday morning after an all-night drive from Missouri. Hoevelmann is building his first Pietenpol, and has pored over designs and magazine articles devoted to the airplane. But nothing beats picking the brains of the people who build and fly them, he said. "This is my first time here and I've got a wealth of information and I've only been here three hours," he said. "Anybody you talk to about a Pietenpol says you better go to Brodhead."
|
